Catholic jihad

Speaking of reactionary Catholics (e.g.), here is another, law professor Adrian Vermeule (Harvard) (he wasn't always one--when I wanted to hire him at Texas twenty years ago, he was simply a run-of-the-mill legal conservative):

Progressive liberalism has its own cruel sacraments—especially the shaming and, where possible, legal punishment of the intolerant or illiberal—and its own liturgy, the Festival of Reason, the ever-repeated overcoming of the darkness of reaction. Because the celebration of the festival essentially requires, as part of its liturgical script, a reactionary enemy to be overcome, liberalism ceaselessly and restlessly searches out new villains to play their assigned part. Thus the boundaries of progressive demands for conformity are structurally unstable, fluid, and ever shifting, not merely contingently so—there can be no lasting peace. Yesterday the frontier was divorce, contraception, and abortion; then it became same-sex marriage; today it is transgenderism; tomorrow it may be polygamy, consensual adult incest, or who knows what. The uncertainty is itself the point. From the liberal standpoint, the essential thing is that the new issue provokes opposition from the forces of reaction, who may then be conquered in a public and dramatic fashion by the political mobilization of liberal forces....

If we are to be entirely flexible about means, to what ends? The ultimate long-run goal is the same as it ever was: to bear witness to the Lord and to expand his one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church to the ends of the earth. In global perspective, the situation is actually quite promising. The twin ideas that we live in a secular age and that Christianity is shrinking apply mainly in the liberal redoubts of the West, and not even all of them. Secularism is actually in decline, chiefly because secular materialists have so few children. The culture of liberalism, having attacked the family, proves incapable of reproducing itself. (Deus non irridetur.)...

Strategically, the Church can be flexible as necessary on all dimensions save one—the gospel teaching and sacramental practice of the magisterium, which perpetuates itself by apostolic succession. Like Paul, in the service of the universal Gospel, the Church can be “all things to all men,” politically speaking, precisely because political forms are merely possible means for carrying the core mission into execution. From the Church’s standpoint, many (although not all) political forms lie within the space of the determinatio—certainly a far broader range of political forms than liberalism permits.

This radical political flexibility as to means, decried by Macaulay and justified by Schmitt, is a hard counsel; it means that ultimate allegiances to political parties, to the nation, even to the Constitution, may all have to go if conditions warrant it. It is not that the strategic Christian may not respect, support, and participate in upholding such things—that is of course often sensible, indeed mandatory (as St. Peter instructs us), when and so long as there is no conflict with the Church’s teaching and mission. Alliances of common goals, as opposed to allegiances, are useful and appropriate, depending upon local conditions. But politically speaking, there can be no “progressive Christians” or “Republican Christians” or even “American Christians.”

AND ONE MORE: A former student points out that earlier this week, Professor Vermeule accused me, based on no evidence, of being likely to engage in unlawful and unprofessional employment discrimination. Amazing. By that logic, one would predict that Professor Vermeule's recent writings will give legal ammunition to every atheist or Jew or Muslim he votes against for appointment or tenure.